A One-legged Ride to Nowhere

On January 6th, I had both my last bike ride for a while and surgery on my right foot. I had painful bone spurs “dremmeled” off, a bone in my foot cut, and the same bone reset and screwed into place. It is the same kind of surgery for bunion repair, although I didn’t have a bunion. My surgeon (a friend) chided me for riding 25 miles on the morning of surgery, but it was the perfect time to get one last ride in. She muttered something about blood sugar and dehydration. I say that if they didn’t want me to ride, they should have told me AND scheduled the surgery for the first thing in the morning rather than the 2:30 pm time. What am I supposed to do, sit around not eating all day? (It was a really nice ride!)

Since the surgery, I’ve been working at pain management, the constant need to elevate the foot to prevent/reduce swelling, walking like Frankenstein in a surgical boot, being chauffeured from place to place because of driving restrictions, and discovering new muscles when they get sore from walking in an unnatural flatfooted way. My recovery is actually going well, but my stamina has been dramatically reduced.

Since Monday, I’ve been planning to get on the trainer, but it took until today to actually inflate the tires, change out the left pedal, remove the right pedal, and climb on the “Beast of Satan”. With my right foot perched on a box, I dropped the bike into the second lowest gear and started my one-legged ride to nowhere. I got a mile and a half closer in 10 minutes, then climbed off knowing the test had gone well and established the baseline threshold for future rides. It is an accomplishment (albeit small) just 2 weeks post surgery. It looks like I’ll be dragging myself back into fitness a little at a time. I predict that in the next 2 weeks I’ll be pretty good at making proper circles with my left leg (and it will want to become my dominant football player sized boss).

Glad to hear you’re doing well. I remember my first time on the bike a couple of years ago after a minor surgery. First ride was tentative at best, but I really felt satisfied and happy with those 16 miles after over a week & a half of forced downtime.